Interactive Activity to Teach Cultural Diversity

This presentation will describe our multi-phase interactive educational activity used to teach cultural diversity to our nurse practitioner students. By combining several teaching methods, including literature review, paper, classroom discussion, case presentation, clinical practice, and self-reflection, we have developed a multi-step activity that includes didactic and clinical experiences. We believe that the combination of individual work, group work, classroom learning, and practical experience provides a sound educational foundation for understanding cultural diversity as it relates to the provision of health care. Our University is located in an urban area with an increasingly diverse population. All of our nurse practitioner students rotate through the university-based health clinic for the uninsured and underinsured, where the majority of patients are from cultures different than those of our students. To prepare our predominately non-Hispanic White population of students for practice in a culturally diverse environment, we have developed a multi-step interactive classroom activity and coupled it with actual clinical practice and subsequent self-reflection to increase the sensitivity and awareness of our students related to cultural diversity. It is our goal to graduate nurse practitioners who have a basic understanding of health beliefs and behaviors that are inherent in different cultures. Each step of the educational activity will be explained and examples will be given.